From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed1.bredband.com!bredband!uio.no!nntp.uio.no!ifi.uio.no!not-for-mail From: Erik Naggum Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Why learn Lisp Date: 28 Aug 2002 16:10:10 +0000 Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 28 Message-ID: <3239539810758390@naggum.no> References: <3d6b57e0.259035583@newsvr> <87y9ar6679.fsf@piracy.red-bean.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: maud.ifi.uio.no 1030551011 8057 129.240.64.16 (28 Aug 2002 16:10:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@ifi.uio.no NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Aug 2002 16:10:11 GMT Mail-Copies-To: never User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:39003 * Dorai Sitaram | I think the Lisp syntax is plenty readable myself, but I also don't think | its syntax is really as terribly minimal as it could be. Some years ago, I spent considerable time playing with the reader in order to learn how it worked and how much I could change it without removing the Lisp feel. I modified the list reader to post-process them such that, e.g., `(x <- y)´ and `(y -> x)´ would transform to `(setf x y)´, reintroduced the `=>´ from Scheme's `cond´ to pass the value of the conditional to the body, got rid of `aref´ with `[array index ...]´ and sundry other minor changes. Most of these were dead ends, but I still kind of like the infix -> and <-. (It looks even better with an assortment of Unicode arrows.) | If Lisp keywords were not written as words fashioned from an alphabet but as | dedicated symbols (say as Japanese kanji), with all other words being | alphabet-based, then the wrench of going from C to Lisp may not be felt as | much. You can do an amazing amount of syntactic harm with Unicode. I have all sorts of cute symbols available on my keyboard, now. Real less-than-or-equal signs, open and filled triangles for brackets and bullets and open and filled circles and squares for bullets, and a little greek and, um. Syntactic harm. -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.